Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday March 12, 2010 @05:36PM
from the but-were-any-court-members-in-playboy dept.

barnyjr writes "According to a story from Reuters, 'Vaccines that contain a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal cannot cause autism on their own, a special US court ruled on Friday, dealing one more blow to parents seeking to blame vaccines for their children's illness. The special US Court of Federal Claims ruled that vaccines could not have caused the autism of an Oregon boy, William Mead, ending his family's quest for reimbursement. ... While the state court determined the autism was vaccine-related, [Special Master George] Hastings said overwhelming medical evidence showed otherwise. The theory presented by the Meads and experts who testified on their behalf "was biologically implausible and scientifically unsupported," Hasting wrote.'"

Not only that, but why should the parents be entitled to "reimbursement" even if the immunization did cause the autism? Yes, the product should be immediately pulled, but do they have a right to get rich because of some hitherto unknown side-effect of a well intentioned vaccine? I don't think so.

The parents shouldn't be given enough money to become rich but, in the case that the vaccines did cause the child to be autistic, they should be given money to assist with treating their child's autism.

+1. If you sell a product and it causes a medical problem you didn't warn them of, I feel like you should at the very least pay the expenses. From what we know the manufacturer had no reason to think, and still has no reason to think, that the vaccine caused autism, so if it were actually proven later, I don't think the manufacturer should be fined as punishment, making the parents or rather their lawyers rich, but if it were causing autism, medical expenses covered would be expected.

That is for everybody's safety. Could you imagine another outbreak of polio, or mumps, or any other disease that has virtually been stamped out (at least in countries that do immunizations) by immunizing? Sorry, but it is not a right for your child to go to a certain school. If you want to go to a specific school, you must adhere by their rules. I am sure there has to be some alternative schools out there that don't have immunization requirements. You can always home school your child if you really don't want to give them immunization shots as well. But acting like your rights have been violated because you have a medically unproven opinion about immunization, and pretending that public schooling is required by law (it isn't), is dishonest. What about the rights of the other hundreds or thousands of children at the school - the ones that have parents that understand the dangers of not immunizing, and who do adhere to the rules? What if you applied the same logic to another scenario? What if I decided that taking the driver license test would give me cancer, and I decided I could just start driving without ever taking the test. It would be ridiculous, and I would be putting others at risk through my behavior.

Have you ever stopped to wonder why polio is so uncommon in the US? Yep, vaccines.

We are currently seeing a resurgent of measles cases in kids BECAUSE parents are not vaccinating their children due to concerns for vaccines causing autism. This will happen with polio as well. You assume a steady state of population in the US (or other country) without influx of unvaccinated, exposed people.

You fail to realize that not every vaccine works as a post-exposure prophylaxis. There are some that do and some that don't. I don't recall if polio is one of them, but a quick pubmed search could probably find out.

Modern medicine is a field of balanced risks. Every medication I prescribe for a patient has a potential to cause harm. I and the patient have to balance this risk versus the risk of not treating the disease. Absolutely no treatment in medicine is "safe". For most, the benefit outweighs the risk. Even supplemental oxygen can be disastrous in a patient with lung disease.

I'll keep an open mind - I'm not sure vaccines either do or don't cause autism.

if you have a genuinely open mind you owe it to yourself to dig a tiny bit deeper and it'll quickly become blindingly clear that they don't. Seriously - the claims of the noisy minority in this issue are absolutely paper thin, and have been conclusively and empirically refuted time and time again.

"You do realize that in the US more children get sick from the polio vaccine than from the actual disease."

That is hard considering US use of the Oral Polio Vaccine was discontinued in 2004 and even then it was not recommended unless the patient in question was at risk because it's known to carry a tiny risk. IVP has been the recommended way to receive the vaccination which has no significant risk except as an egg allergen.

You do realize that in the US more children get sick from the polio vaccine than from the actual disease.

When no one has the disease, then that's a tautology.

If suddenly there was an outbreak of polio, I support vaccinating children who have come into contact with that child.

And that's why I don't want a nutcase like you making decisions that affect others. Vaccinating people after exposure is like insurance companies offering a free oil change with every claim for a totaled car. Too little, too lat

I'm not sure if you didn't understand me, or purposefully chose to ignore what I said and answer something else. I'll make it more clear. No one has gotten polio in the US from someone infected by polio in the time frame in question. You seemed to only support my statement, and said nothing that contradicted it at all, but did so as if you were correcting me.

A disease, any disease, that has a 100% vaccination rate (and the vaccine is reasonably effective) will have more people harmed by the vaccine than

If the government is going to force people to get vaccinated (and they do; you can't go to school without it), there is at least some burden on them to pay for the negative effects, no matter how well intentioned.

In the US there is a National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to handle precisely this sort of thing. Some people genuinely are harmed by those well-intended vaccines. They do help out everybody (herd immunity), and everybody pays into the compensation fund, to the tune of 75 cents per shot.

Clearly, that's a tempting pile of money, and desperate parents of autistic children are willing to ignore the data that says quite clearly that there's no connection in order to get to it.

You are required in all US states to provide your child with an education that meets state guidelines. This is usually done via public and private schools, but some choose to home-school their children. In some states, home schooling is allowed only by persons with teaching credentials, meaning that parents must get such credentials if they wish to be their child's teacher, or hire a tutor.

It has been pressed, and it has been found to be constitutional in most cases, as least in California.

In re Rachel L., et al., v. Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles dealt with this. The 2d. District Court of Appeals, in a 3-0 opinion written by Justice Croskey, noted that "California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children." The opinion addressed several points, including claimed religious exemption, and found that the parents' assertion that they can home school the children due to "sincerely held religious beliefs" doesn't hold up, in part because the assertions (which were not made under penalty of perjury) were too sparse to be taken as conclusive evidence of their beliefs. The sparseness may have included an apparently long string of reasons the parents gave to officials, religious reasons being added only fairly late in the game.

They do make note of an exception for Amish children under the case of Wisconsin v. Yoder, decided by the US Supreme Court in 1972. The Amish are able to make limited religious exemption to going to school. However, the Amish in that case still accepted compulsory external education through the eighth grade. It was only after eighth grade that an exemption applied, and only because the Amish way of life rests on "deep religious conviction, shared by an organized group, and intimately related to daily living" which is centuries old. That case involved witness testimony that compulsory education past the eighth grade, at which point Amish children begin learning a trade and incorporating fully into Amish society, would "ultimately result in the destruction of the Old Order Amish church community as it exists in the United States today."

In summary, compulsory education under the tutelage of credentialed teaching professionals is currently seen by the courts, at least in California, as constitutional. The case was remanded to the trial court for factual findings, but the opinion was appealed to the state Supreme Court. I can't find any listings for it there, so I can only presume that it was denied certiorari and the trial courts are sorting it out. If it is still going through the trial courts, the appeals court ruling would hold sway throughout the state.

If the government is going to force people to get vaccinated (and they do; you can't go to school without it), there is at least some burden on them to pay for the negative effects, no matter how well intentioned.

In a town near me, 1 in 6 kids is skipping vaccination, due to the religious exemption. That's crazy, and I expect a wave of something really nasty to hit the town soon, killing some kids. I wonder if those parents could be sued for the public health risk they're creating?

Okay. I am going to assume that you are merely extremely ignorant. The reason for the low public health risk is vaccines and their heavy use.

"Even un-immunized the risks of most sicknesses are quite low to cause any real damage. Measles, Mumps and Rubella generally are low-mortality when generally speaking."

Ever hear of the flu? You know, that seasonal illness that is estimated to kill about about 36K a year. I think you would consider the flu to be a rather low mortality and low risk disease. I wonder what the dead think. That doesn't count the lucky ones who just got to be hospitalized.

For measles: One in 1000 cases of measles results in encephalitis, with a high rate of permanent neurological complications in those who survive. Approximately five percent develop pneumonia. The fatality rate is between one and three per 1000 cases. Without vaccination most people would catch it. What's a couple million cases a year times a few per thousand....

"Yeah, a few kids might be really sick, but if treatment is quick enough, it is easy to contain and cure."

If the government is going to force people to get vaccinated (and they do; you can't go to school without it), there is at least some burden on them to pay for the negative effects, no matter how well intentioned.
Why? Look at seatbelts. Required by the government. What if it jams in an accident, and you can't get out of your car, and you are severely burned. Does the government owe you compensation because they required you to wear a seatbelt? Maybe you were burned badly, but if you weren't wearing a seat

Not only that, but why should the parents be entitled to "reimbursement" even if the immunization did cause the autism? Yes, the product should be immediately pulled, but do they have a right to get rich because of some hitherto unknown side-effect of a well intentioned vaccine? I don't think so.

I'm sorry, but you must be new here.

And no, I don't mean new here, but new to the last decade or three. Dunno if you know this or not, but there have been radical developments in greed and corruption over the last couple of decades, which in turn have flooded our court systems and practically gave birth to a whole new breed of Government. It's sickening, really.

It can all be solved and summarized in two simple words; loser pays. That would likely flush out 80% of the crap clogging the system today.

Dunno if you know this or not, but there have been radical developments in greed and corruption over the last couple of decades,

People are just as corrupt as they ever have been. If you think people are more corrupt now than in years past you are either very naive or very stupid. Go pick up a history book. The methods (sort of) change but people don't.

It can all be solved and summarized in two simple words; loser pays. That would likely flush out 80% of the crap clogging the system today.

And your evidence for this is what exactly? Because it sounds vaguely logical? Yes loser pays would solve some problems but it would create others. It would reduce some of the more frivolous lawsuits but it would also make some needed lawsuits too risky to attempt. Loser pays strongly tilts the playing field towards those with the most money - even more so than it already is. I don't necessarily have a problem with the general concept of loser pays but please recognize that it isn't something that is going to cure every ill in our legal system.

Frankly if you want to reduce the load on our legal system, stop the ridiculous "war on drugs" - at least the portion related to user and possession charges. The US incarcerates a percentage of the population on minor drug charges that is way out of proportion with other industrialized nations. The war on drugs has FAR more to do with our clogged legal system than frivolous torts.

You need to make the supply chain legal, this will break the organized crime supply chains and fix a lot of problems in some of our neighboring countries (and our own). Decriminalization of use without decriminalization of supplying the stuff will only cause more problems. It's one thing if we want to make drugs illegal, but it's not really fair to export all these problems to our neighbors.

Problematic given that lawyers of differential quality have differential cost. So if I try to sue a big corporation, and they decide to run up the court costs into the millions, I'm screwed if I lose? I may as well not sue, no matter how legitimate my claim.

So if I try to sue a big corporation, and they decide to run up the court costs into the millions, I'm screwed if I lose? I may as well not sue, no matter how legitimate my claim.

"Loser Pays" only makes sense to people operating under the bizarre delusion that the "winner" and "loser" in a court case are always going to be the same as the one who was right and wrong. Frivolous lawsuits will result in the litigant losing their shirts, and just lawsuits will still prevail.

Limit the amount the loser pays in expenses to be the lesser of what the loser and the winner spent on the case. (This mitigates the "imbalance of resources" problem)

Allow any party to "opt out" of "loser pays" (and the expense reporting requirements below) but if they lose they still have to pay the full expenses of other parties that didn't opt out (even if those expenses are greater than what they would have paid if they had not opted out) and if they win, they get no reimbursement for their expenses. (This allows one party to mask their expenses and/or avoid the overhead of reporting - but at potential cost)

Require that each party file weekly "detailed expenses to date" reports electronically with the court and all parties can see the total (but not the detail) of other parties' reports.

If a lawyer charges their client any contingency fee, that party is ineligible for reimbursement of their legal fees if they win, but if they lose, the lawyer, not the client, pays for the winners' legal expenses. Each party must make an declaration in the initial filing if they will/will not be charging their client an contingency fee. (It should be possible to alter this decision later at the court's discretion, but some "pro rata" rules would need to be established to limit the % contingency and reimbursement based on what was spent before and after the change in this decision.) (This would discourage frivolous lawsuits where the lawyer is willing to spend his/her time in hopes of lucky jackpot)

Lawyers in "loser pays" cases can not charge their client anything if they win and the loser actually pays all the expenses filed with the court. If a loser defaults on their obligation to pay, perhaps the prevailing party's lawyer can, by prior arrangement, take part of the judgment. (This encourages accurate reporting by all parties).

Subject expenses to audit by a court approved auditor and limit expenses reimbursable to the winner to "reasonable and necessary" However, "unreasonable" expenses by the loser are still counted for the "lesser of winner and loser expense calculations" - they shouldn't have recorded or incurred any unreasonable or unnecessary expenses. (This will discourage unnecessary expenses and motions)

If expenses are not recorded in a timely fashion, they would be disallowed for "loser pays" calculations IFF the party that records them late wins (i.e., such expenses won't be reimbursed). (This discourages "late reporting" to game the other party's expectations of their risk).

Expenses that are recorded and later reversed would be counted (even though subsequently reversed) for "loser pays' calculations IFF the party that records them and reverses them loses. (This discourages reporting of charges "early" to intimidate the other party).

Parties that intentionally misrepresent expenses or manipulate the timing of their reporting would be subject to sanctions (including being found in contempt of court, fines, removal from the bar, etc).

If a party sues for $X and ends up being awarded $Y where $Y<$X, only $Y/$X of their expenses will be reimbursed by the loser. (This will discourage exaggerating claims)

The final "loser" is determined when the last appeal is resolved or the period for filing an appeal has elapsed - intermediate "wins" have no bearing on the final settlement of legal expenses.

If a defendant makes a financial offer to settle with no other restrictions (such as gag clauses) except that acceptance of the offer completely resolves all claims being litigated, the defendant's liability to pay legal expenses of the plaintiff (because the plaintiff prevails) will be limited. If any settlement amount offer made was greater than or equal to the amount of the final judgment, the defendant would only be liable for the prevailing parties' legal expenses up to the time the first such of

Medical treatments have risks. As a culture, we want everyone to be vaccinated to prevent communicable diseases.

More explanation from the article:

The families sought payment under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a no-fault system that has a $2.5 billion fund built up from a 75-cent-per-dose tax on vaccines....More than 5,300 cases were filed by parents who believed vaccines may have caused autism in their children. The no-fault payout system is meant to protect vaccine makers from costly lawsuits that drove many out of the vaccine-making business.

It has been a central principle of legal systems world-wide, for several thousand years, that if one is wronged or harmed, one can expect to receive recompense from the perpetrator. When you buy a faulty product, do you expect to get your money back? If a drunk crashes into your car, would you not sue for damages?

What you are advocating is not justice. You are advocating for a complete lack of responsibility for wrongdoers.

It has been a central principle of legal systems world-wide, for several thousand years, that if one is wronged or harmed, one can expect to receive recompense from the perpetrator.

He didn't say otherwise. What he said was that the parents shouldn't be entitled to get rich off the deal. They should be compensated for a whole list of things, such as any and all medical treatments, special care needs, lost income, etc. No one has ever disputed that. But none of that adds up to the multi-tens-of-millions amounts that some people are suing for.

My dad's idea - that I still haven't found fault with - is that you should be able to sue for all the punitive damages you want, but that you shoul

Yes, but in the US this concept has spiraled out of control. It's gone beyond mere protection for the wronged into a massive chilling effect on society. But Philip K. Howard says it far better than I: Four ways to fix a broken legal system. [ted.com]

The difference is simple, negligence. Is a drug company that develops a vaccine --and spends decades testing it-- negligent because it had a hereto-unknown side effect? I don't think so. Is the drunk driver negligent? Absolutely. Is the manufacturer of a car negligent if one tire blows at highway speed and injures someone? A lot harder of a question. Was it caused by a defect in design or defect in manufacture? If not, it wasn't negligence. If so, did they know about it or --and this is the key poi

I'm sorry, but a vaccine that gives people autism is pretty much the definition of 'defective in design or manufacture.' Not that there is such a thing, but if there were, the company that produced it would be at fault.

Well let's see

Andrew Wakefield (born 1956) is a British-born surgeon and researcher best known for his discredited work regarding the MMR vaccine and its possible connection with autism and inflammatory bowel disease.[1] Wakefield was the lead author of a 1998 study, published in The Lancet, which reported bowel symptoms in twelve children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders, to which the authors suggested a possible link with the MMR vaccine. Though stating "We did not prove an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described," the paper tabulated parental allegations, and adopted these allegations as fact for the purpose of calculating a temporal link between receipt of the vaccine and the first onset of what were described as "behavioural symptoms". Andrew Wakefield [wikipedia.org]

His "test subjects" were attending a birthday party hosted by a lawyer suing drug company over immunizations causing "autism". Wakefield was one of the last authors of the paper published in the Lancet, 10 of the 12 Co-Authors had had their names removed from the paper and finally the Lancet took the almost unprecedented action of officially retracting the paper.

In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were “consecutively referred” and that investigations were “approved” by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false. Therefore we fully retract this paper from the published record.The Editors of The Lancet The Lancet, London NW1 7BY, UK [thelancet.com]

Furthermore the British General Medical Council detremined that Wakefield was dishonest, irresponsibile and showed callous disregard for the distress and pain of children. [telegraph.co.uk]Autism Spectrum Disorders are genetically based and the rates of diagnosis are increasing long after thimersol has been discontinued in vaccines. It's just coincidence that the symptoms of profound Autism become unavoidably obvious at the same time the MMR is given to toddlers.

For the same reason that if you start your new car one day and it explodes due to a design flaw crippling you for life, the manufacturer owes you damages. Because they're supposed to test against that possibility before they start selling them.

In this case, though, the evidence does not support the theory that vaccines caused the problem.

Let's just carry out your opinion to its logical conclusion. You say people are entitled to millions of dollars each for loss of "quality of life"...

* If each individual were afforded the right to sue for millions of dollars, what would be the effect on the cost to produce a vaccine? Answer: costs rise
* With costs and unknown risk of lawsuits rising, if you were a manufacturer facing lawsuits, would you still make this stuff? (Ignorant people above reference "huge profits", but generic vaccine

This won't stop the paranoid from preventing their children from being immunized because some of these same people have interesting theories about how the vaccines are deliberately nefarious in other ways (going as far on out there as mind control, etc). These people and their little theory have done more to damage public health in a short amount of time than a lot of other things...

Nah, you only get a Darwin award if you do society a favor by killing your dumb self off _before_ reproducing (thus taking your genes out of the pool). Not only does this situation, explicitly, require them to have had children, it also means that they have, directly, done society a dis-service by increasing the chances of other children getting sick because they're too stupid to get their child immunized.

Except they may not even kill themselves, they may kill other, innocent random people who can't get vaccinated for legitimate reasons: eg: Immuno-compromised (transplant, chemotherapy, genetics, other), too young (just recently born, see Dana McCaffrey in Australia), etc.

That pushes them over into the category of criminally negligence, IMHO, but we just aren't at that level yet.

That is the mean thing here, the vaccination system can support a certain number of freeloaders, so on an individual level these do not select themselves out of the genepoop. They can rest their hands and still reap the benefits from those who actually take the really really small risk of complications stemming from an inoculation. Risk of catching and dying from an infection c*X%, risk of vaccination complications Y%. But after a vaccination quota of Z% the c modifying the X% outweights the Y% - so you are an egoist and don't go, perfectly logical!

Classical game theory, the Tragedy of the Commons [wikipedia.org] subtype to be precise. The fact that rational individuals all acting in their own self interest (which you can show mathematically) can ruin it for everyone is a very good for cause for government to step in and fix this if the egoism becomes too prevalent.

Now, back to Darwin, on a larger level this can of course endanger an entire species, but also drive selection towards a new species which has the rules of cooperation, i.e. altruism, written into their genes, voilá, social animals!

i agree, 100%. though i'd like to add that altruism is none other than a more intelligent way of calculating one's expected utility. i.e., in many cases an action that benefits the group also benefits the member. unfortunately, this isn't always true, because i'll die in, like, 60 years, and anything that happens after that doesn't affect me at all - hence a perfectly intelligent selfish agent should use fossil fuels, pollute the environment, cause global warming, etc etc, because most of us will be dead be

To paranoid people this sort of thing is only more proof that the government is owned by corporations and drug companies. These sorts of people never stop to consider evidence to the contrary, it just flies by their head without ever entering. Dangerous state to get into.

Some day it will be discovered that autism is actually caused not by thimerosal itself, but by the way thimerosal interacts with certain proteins present only in children whose parents are predisposed to excessive paranoia. This discovery will cause parents' heads to explode.

This won't stop the paranoid from preventing their children from being immunized because some of these same people have interesting theories about how the vaccines are deliberately nefarious in other ways (going as far on out there as mind control, etc). These people and their little theory have done more to damage public health in a short amount of time than a lot of other things...

And it won't stop me, as a parent making healthcare decisions for my children, or as an individual making decisions about my own healthcare, from refusing any injection that contains thimerisol. I take reasonable precautions to avoid ingesting heavy metals, including having them injected into my body. Every vaccine that I have been offered or required to take since I've realized that thimerisol contains mercury, is also available in single-use vials that are essentially mercury-free (and with a single-use

Then your pediatrician and physician need to get a better understanding of basic science. There's about 25 micrograms of mercury in 0.5mL of a vaccine preserved with thimerisol (see FDA & Thimerisol [autismcoach.com] under heading 'Thimerisol as a preservative'). The EPA recommendation is 0.1 micrograms/kg/day maximum mercury ingestion (see Mercury in Fish [pbs.org] under heading 'Step 1'.) That means for a 6 year-old child, their weight is estimated as (age + 4)*2=20kg. So 2mcg/day. That means a single dose of an average vac

The probability is 0%. There is no causal link between the two. They are unrelated disease processes, and have no more link than if you walked under a ladder, had a black cat cross your path, then got bowel cancer. The only thing that has ever raised the possibility of a link is a very small, very biased study by a crackpot doctor who wasn't even a specialist in the field, funded by a group of parents who had an a priori wish to have a link proven. You might as well pick any other unrelated medical intervention in your child with no biologically plausible relation to autism (e.g. having the umbilical cord to less than 5cm length at delivery, to pick something random from thin air) and then refuse to have the umbilical cord cut short in any subsequent children you may have until someone relents and does a study.

It was a study that found what the person doing the study was paid to find, was done by one person finding what they want to find, and wasn't confirmed by anything else ever done before. It was "debunked" long before the fraudster was caught and the paper withdrawn. That you are incapable of evaluating the study, but feel the need to follow it anyway demonstrates something inherent in your personality.

At the time, it appeared that getting autism from the vaccine was a higher probability than getting the disease itself. For most of these diseases, Autism is more life altering the actual disease (assuming access to first world health care, which I have).

Autism is a spectrum disorder that is almost certainly genetically inherited. What you've actually done was to endanger your child because it's far more likely that an vaccine preventable illness would cause a fever sufficient to cause brain damage than it would for an immunization to have a similar adverse reaction. Many people and organizations have a vested interest in scare-mongering on this and other topics for example

, Autism Speaks has grown into the nation's largest autism science and advocacy organization, dedicated to funding research into the causes, prevention, treatments and a cure for autism Autism Speaks History [autismspeaks.org]

yet when you look at their IRS Forms 990 for 2008 [autismspeaks.org] you see things likeSalaries, other compensation, employee benefits $17,756,876.Total fundraising expenses $14,178,307 = 31,935,183 ;Contributions and grants 65,826,629. ; 31,935,183/ 65,826,629 = 48 % of their revenues goes into salaries and fundraising! The only way you can pull those kind of number is to portray Autism in it's most devastating forms.

The use of vaccines is a public health necessity; vaccines are by far the most cost effective tool we have for preventing the spread of communicable diseases.

There have always been controversies about vaccines: there is non-zero risk to individuals from any medical treatment, and significant benefit to the population as a whole. As a single individual, you remove the (very small) risk by not having the vaccine, and you gain most all of the benefits if most everyone else around you has been vaccinated.

Spreading fear and misinformation about the safety of vaccines can cause direct, measurable and irreversible harm. Measuring the connection between a medical treatment and possible harmful effects is something drug companies can do very well, and the FDA approvals process (when it works) keeps the companies honest. We have solid, irrefutable and repeatable scientific evidence that shows vaccines do not cause these diseases, like autism.

I think there is a valid question though of what diseases should you be immunized for as a society. Smallpox is wiped out, should we still immunize for it? Chicken pox also has a vaccine, but if you get it as a child you only risk a week at home, some itching, and maybe a scar if your parents can stop you from itching too much. With such minor risks I probably wouldn't have a kid get the chicken pox vaccine (hell, I'd probably go send him to play with the kids who just came down with it- get immunity th

As does the vaccine. In this case, shingles is tied to the virus itself. Since the vaccine consists of live, but attenuated viruses, the vaccine can lead to shingles just as much as getting chicken pox can.

It has been wiped out as a threat to public health. If you're in the United States, you're not likely to have been vaccinated if you're under 40. You don't need to be vaccinated, because there's no disease.

Of course there's a question. It pops up semiregularly. Here in the United States, the most recent debate arose because some schools began to require vaccination for HPV (human papilloma virus). This was controversial because:

Only girls can be vaccinated; there is not yet any vaccine for boys.

HPV is vilified in our culture as the virus that causes genital warts. It's believed to cause a lot of other things besides, but this is the most widely known effect.

Antivax people think vaccinations are dangerous.

The fact that only girls can be vaccinated was an issue for some, but a very minor one. (If a medicine exists that can lower blood pressure but which only really works on people of African descent, that's not racism, no matter what anyone says.)

Most of the vocal complaints tended to focus on the third point: that parents were afraid that more vaccines exposed their children to greater risks. While some dissenters actually believed this, however, this argument also tended to conceal the debate over the second point.

HPV is a sexually transmitted disease. Vaccinating girls against a sexually transmitted disease is tantamount to implying they will be having sex. Vaccinating very young girls, therefore, is absolutely abhorrent and -- to conservative Christians, in particular -- only underscores the moral depravity of modern society.

Now, just to be clear, the reason you want to vaccinate girls against HPV is not to keep them from getting unsightly genital warts when they go out having sex with strange men while they're in primary school. The reason you vaccinate them at a young age is because they're not having sex then, and a vaccine only works before you catch the disease. (Some studies suggest that up to 90 percent of the adult population carries some form of HPV.) And the reason you vaccinate them at all is not to enhance their sex lives, but because if they do catch a certain form of HPV it can lead to papillomas that can be very hard to detect until they turn into cervical cancer, which, if not detected, can kill them stone dead. In other words, this is a vaccine you give someone as a girl to aid her chances of living to become an old woman.

The problem for some, though, is that removing the threat of sexually transmitted disease tends to undermine abstinence-only sexual education programs in the United States, which are a key component of the platforms of the Christian Right and anti-abortion activists. That's right; for some people, the real problem is not that vaccination gets you autism. The problem is that vaccination gets you abortions. They don't like to talk about that, though, because abortion is such a hot-button issue and many on the Left immediately tune out at any whiff of a religious undercurrent in politics. So instead they jump on the bandwagon claiming all vaccinations are "untested," "experimental," "have unknown side effects," etc. Even people who don't believe in religion can fall for junk science.

This is just one example of how these issues can quickly become clouded by politics, but it also demonstrates why we must continue to emphasize the science and the science alone. Vaccines save lives. If you get vaccinated and it doesn't directly save your life, it still might have saved mine (through effects such as herd immunity). People shouldn't die young of any disease, be it mumps, measles, polio, of cervical cancer caused by HPV.

Smallpox is wiped out, should we still immunize for it?

Interestingly enough, in the United States we don't. So I guess the "pro-vax" folks aren't as crazy as the antivax folks want to believe.

Yep, something to always remember about any drug you might take or any treatment you might undergo. But it's also worth remembering that there's a non-zero risk to eating food (could be tainted), driving a car, or sticking your face in a fan*. Life is all about balancing the risks, not eliminating them entirely. In some ways, we're victims of our own success at risk mitigation: we've come to view risks as optional rather than a matter of course. (Applies to not just medicine, but also space travel, the way we raise our kids, and pretty much everything else.)

As a scientist I recognise the power and safety of vaccines, and I also recognise the logic in your arguments. Most of what you say I do agree with. However, I also recognise the implicit argument in your post--that vaccination should be mandatory and or the antivax crowd should be silenced--and as a human being I'm going to tell you to shove that point of view up your ass.

If you don't like the antivax crowd, you're going to have to tackle them with argument and reason, not with the iron hand of majority ru

As a scientist it is likely you work around other scientists. Scientists usually respond to reason.

The types of people who are really against vaccination do not respond to reason. You can show them a scientific paper in a major peer reviewed scientific/medical journal and they will say either "This isn't really a reliable source", "Scientists don't know everything", "Scientists are IN ON IT TOO", or "This video that my friend Matt, who is like so smart, gave me said that this isn't true so it is obviously

I can understand these parent's hurt and anger, and why they would seek to find a cause, a reason, someone to blame for their troubles. It's a natural human reaction in such a case, where so little is known of the real causes. And big Pharma has certainly proven, over and over, that it feels no responsibility towards it's customers and will choose 'making a buck' over 'doing the right thing,' pretty much all the time. But this is still ridiculous. At this point, you either have to buy into a full-blown whackadoodle conspiracy theory, or admit that vaccines do not, and never have caused autism.

That people are so quick to blame pharmaceuticals for everything that may happen post vaccination. I understand that a lot of it comes from people not knowing whats in the vaccination - they don't know what they are putting into their children and they realize "Hey this could be cause" after something harmful happens. Don't get me wrong, I agree that its a problem, I don't ever go and get my flu shot because the local health regional offices won't tell me what's in the vaccine. [tinfoilhat] How do I know th

That people are so quick to blame pharmaceuticals for everything that may happen post vaccination.

The parents in this case are suffering from the logical fallacy post hoc, ergo propter hoc, or, "after this, therefor because of this." That is, they believe that the fact that their child developed autism after being vaccinated is proof that the vaccine was the cause of the autism. This makes as much sense as saying that if you get hungry for breakfast after sunrise, the Sun's rising must have caused you to get hungry.

Let me be crystal clear about this, vaccines do not cause autism nor is there any decent study that is statistically and/or scientifically valid which shows such a provable correlation.

And we're running studies of autism here, led by one of my colleagues who has an autistic child herself.

You really need to move on.

The problem is that, for most people, they grasp at straws and try to find some observable "cause" they can link with autism. It's quite possible that it has more to do with environmental and/or emotional stresses on the mother but people try to put the cart before the horse and "prove" that a vaccine - which may have been due to travel (hint - enviro/emo stress) or bad health conditions (same) - was the cause.

The problem is that, for most people, they grasp at straws and try to find some observable "cause" they can link with autism. It's quite possible that it has more to do with environmental and/or emotional stresses on the mother but people try to put the cart before the horse and "prove" that a vaccine - which may have been due to travel (hint - enviro/emo stress) or bad health conditions (same) - was the cause.

OK - as a parent of a six-year old with "primary" autism (e.g. low-functioning), I'd like to clear the air on a few points:

"Most" of the parents of autistic kids don't buy into the vaccine-causes-autism bunk - only a very vocal minority, which unfortunately our media amplifies

The mechanism behind autism is, as you undoubtedly know, not well-understood. In the absence of a good understanding, this kind of uninformed speculation thrives.

Lives have been lost as a result due to botched "Chelation" therapies [skeptoid.com], and money is being made by the self-styled DAN doctors who tell desperate parents what they want to hear

Please, move on, you're just embarrassing yourselves.

I have met a number of other parents of autistic kids. Those that are desperate enough to by into these theories are (often) otherwise rational, intelligent people. They are desperate for hope, and feel they owe it to their child to attempt some kind of cure. Whether this is due to denial (of the permanent disability) or unrelenting hope and a moral code that says "anything is better than nothing", I don't know. I do know I can relate to this, to a point, and was frustrated at the limited medical treatments available for my own son. Please have some sympathy for these misguided parents, as the real culprits are the alt-medicine charlatans who claimed to have found the cure, and the DAN doctors who really ought to know better.

[blockquote]The theory presented by the Meads and experts who testified on their behalf...[/blockquote]

Who are these "experts"? Are their identities in the public record? I want to know how these fools can possibly considered qualified, expert witnesses when they clearly lack the medical and scientific judgment to critically and objectively evaluate and analyze the facts in front of them. Really. How is it that these people still have jobs?

You'd be surprised. There's a lot of people out there with no knowledge on a particular subject area, but who are quick to come up with a 'theory' and pass it off as fact and themselves as 'experts' in that area. Financial advisers, anyone?

The Lancet didn't retract that ridiculous paper from 1998 until last month [cnn.com] and it pretty much started all this ridiculous BS. It's absolutely unconscionable that they didn't retract it sooner. Ten of the original 13 authors retracted back in 2004. That should have been a hint.

The problem with vaccines is that being vaccinated as an individual isn't what makes you safe. It's the vaccination of the herd that protects. That is, for a particular disease that you might be vaccinated against, let's say measles, it's safer to be the only person in a crowd who isn't vaccinated than to be the one person in the crowd who is vaccinated. Vaccines aren't 100% effective and what makes them truly effective, is having everyone take them.

Back in 2006, some girl in Indiana [medpagetoday.com] got measles on a trip to Romania. She came back and shared that gift with the people in her church, simply by showing up. Roughly 10% of the 500 people present weren't vaccinated and 32% of those people developed the measles. One person who got the vaccine also got the measles, but 94% of the cases were unvaccinated people.

The problem these days is that people don't bother to learn history. Anyone who's been to an old cemetery (I live in Arkansas, and we have tons of them) pretty much can't miss the fact that there are tons of kids aged 10 and under buried. Why? In the early 1800s, infant mortality was about 20%. Think about that. One in five infants (1 year old and younger) died. A lot more died before the age of 5. Not all of that is vaccines, but a lot of it is! Before the vaccine, smallpox alone was killing 400,000 Europeans a year.

Personally, I think vaccines ought to be required by law because they're a public safety issue and people who won't do it should go to jail.

The Lancet didn't retract that ridiculous paper from 1998 until last month [cnn.com] and it pretty much started all this ridiculous BS. It's absolutely unconscionable that they didn't retract it sooner. Ten of the original 13 authors retracted back in 2004. That should have been a hint.

I heard a nice interview with the Lancet editor on this matter. I can't remember where--some podcast, probably AAAS or On the Media.

Anyway, it wasn't unconscionable at all. It's actually a change in the role of scientific journals, and kind of a sad one.

The idea that a scientific journal has a duty to retract a paper just because it's wrong is new ground. As all scientists know, a lot of papers are wrong. The most interesting ones are the most likely to be wrong. Being published by "The Lancet" (or "S

Has anybody actually done any research to figure out what causes autism other than vaccines? Has the whole epidemiological process been derailed by the vaccine connection controversy? This is a serious question that now seems to be have become one of these taboo science topics that nobody wants to investigate because its history has been so controversial.

Tons of research has been done, mostly pointing to combinations of environmental factors and genetics. Last I heard, the big interesting "cause" to look at was Vitamin D -- because while autism isn't more common in Somalia than it is anywhere else, it's much more common among Somalians in Oregon and Sweden than... Which hints at Vitamin D issues.

Keep in mind that there's no evidence at all that the incidence of autism is increasing, only the diagnosis -- which is to say, obviously, before the notion of "h

Perhaps widespread vaccination increases autism rates because the diseases vaccination prevents cause fever in children, and fever in children fights autism symptoms [time.com]. Or perhaps the children more prone to autism were also more prone to dying from childhood infections, and now, due to vaccination programs, more of them are surviving long enough to be diagnosed with autism.

I personally find the abundant anecdotal evidence of such a link quite disturbing, requiring thorough investigation, though this is unlikely to happen due to the above reason.

The thorough investigation has happened. Several times. See for example here [plosone.org] and here [plosone.org]. Or you could read the CDC article [cdc.gov]. Oh, but wait, they're all government institutions! They would all be devastated by that link! That's why they lie! They all lie! The cake is a lie! Wait, wrong channel...

The point is that the anti-vaxxers - and yes, the derogative term is appropriate - are about as concerned about truth and as scientifically literate as all the Moon-hoaxers. There is nothing that scientists can do to cha

Too late. There are areas where the collective immunity has declined enough that outbreaks are more common, and the fatality rate has climbed. Because many of those who were not vaccinated never will get the shots, it will be some decades before the risk is reduced back to its old level even if the practice if vaccinating young children were to return to prior levels, and the mortality rate for these diseases will progress through the age

they're also isolated from a great many other things that commonfolk are exposed to daily. If you create 100,000 changes and then see an effect, you can't point to any one of those changes and call it the cause of the effect.

Ok, so this one person talks to a few other people in one area, and only finds a few cases of autism. Shocking. I'd like to wait for a proper field study that does at least some proper random sampling. Not to mention that the article fails to account for the possibility that the Amish, being a very segregated group, just might not have the genetic predisposition that leads to autism.

The US stopped using thimerosal in vaccines in 1999. If it was causing autism, we should have seen a drop in the autism rates to Amish levels by now, 10 years later. Instead, the rates are still going up! [time.com] Perhaps the increase in autism cases diagnosed since the beginning of the use of thimerosal have more to do with newer diagnostic procedures than with vaccinations.

That the primary motivator for the vaccine is greed does not change the fact that the vaccine will (assuming no scamming) also provide a health benefit. This shouldn't be an argument against taking a vaccine, especially since you can't go in the head of everyone who worked on the vaccine in some form or another to determine whether it actually is greed. After all, who's to tell the scientist(s) who did the actual vaccine discovery was(were) greedy?

Small amounts of mercury have been used for ages in the silver amalgam used for fillings in teeth, with no dangerous side effects. Just a counterpoint about the mercury. Under certain conditions its perfectly safe.

Health Canada (http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hl-vs/iyh-vsv/environ/merc-eng.php) seems to think that all mercury exposure is bad (since small amounts add up to be a problem) and even mention how the use of these fillings (on their own pretty much harmless) is one more exposure to a dangerous chemical. "you may want to consider using a product that does not contain mercury."

Uh, please tell me you are not referring to the Lancet article by Dr Whackjob (Wakefield for the interested) The one that all the co-authors pulled out of, the Lancet withdrew it's endorsement from, and the author was discredited for not only cooking data but for not revealing that he has both direct and indirect financial conflicts of interest (including, if I remember correctly, a patent application outstanding for a new vaccine... or vaccine preservative... something, I forget.)